


I like a look of Agony

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, F/M, Gen, Holidays, Humor, Marriage, Thanksgiving Dinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8660320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The truth was, Jed would have liked a real answer to his question, but it wasn't the point of asking it.





	

“I don’t understand this holiday,” Anne complained. 

That was not unusual as Anne’s default state was essentially some variation on a whine, made tolerable to her American comrades only by her accent. Mary sometimes wondered if Anne was in the States because there was no excuse for her in Great Britain. She weighed Anne against Monty Python and found the balance tilted in the direction of thanks, but it was a vanishingly small margin some days. Mary and Jed were hosting and Mary was post-call, a nasty one with a few too many codes and ICU transfers, and it turned out Jed had only bought canned cranberry sauce and green beans, so the meal was a little more authentically retro than Mary had hoped; Anne’s dedication to picking up the refrain of her unpleasant dissatisfaction was wearing thin. Very, very thin.

Jed could see that Mary was getting wound up by Anne—once the call schedule had come out, after the switch Lisette begged for, he’d asked Mary to reconsider the holiday plans, at least pare back the guest list to Emma and Sam and the Charlie Brown special, but she’d been adamant and he had grasped, early on, that Mary’s will was far more implacable then his own; it turned out what he thought was steel was marshmallow in comparison to a Manchester Phinney. He’d tried to step it up, had made sure to follow her neatly written time-table and ironed Aunt Margo’s embroidered table-cloth and the napkins before he set the table with it and his best efforts had seemed to be enough (even though he’d made some unfortunate errors with the canned vegetables) but Anne was in fine form today and his usually sweet, patient Mary was starting to show signs of an impressive telling off/tantrum. These were rare but potentially devastating and he knew she would be very unhappy afterwards that she’d blown up at the holiday dinner, however much Anne deserved it (richly, entirely, cosmically in his opinion). Despite her hair being pulled back in an elegant chignon with combs, wearing her grandmother’s pearls and a cashmere sweater-dress the color of a good Burgundy and twice as intoxicating on Mary, he suddenly saw her child’s face in her expression and it occurred to him he might well become very familiar with a similar small face, a secret, joyful thought he could share with her once everyone had gone home and he’d gotten her in her flannel PJs with something predictable and consoling that she’d DVRed playing. Until then, he’d have to take on Anne “Grinch” Hastings for the good of them all.

“I don’t see what’s so hard to understand, Anna-Banana,” he said, pausing to let the nickname she hated linger in the air. Emma covered her smile with a hand. “Watch a parade, eat a lot of food, play football, eat more food. Friends and family, saying thank you…this is calculus?” Would it be enough? Anne narrowed her eyes at him and he saw she’d worn emerald green mascara.

“But Squattie and fish-heads and the Pilgrims leaving a perfectly fine country to land on a rock…and all those odd little curly things on the green beans,” Anne replied, somehow even more snide. Jed let out a breath at his initial failure and Sam raised his eyes heaven-ward, as if he were silently inquiring of the Man Above how they’d all gotten saddled with Anne in the department; her skill at microsurgery was not feeling like to enough to offset everything else about her at the moment. Jed glanced at Mary, whose cheeks were now the bright red of a particularly impressive rage, and spotted Bryon grimacing uneasily between the two women. It was evidently time for the big guns.

“I think the real question is, what the hell is Boxing Day? I defy you to give an adequate explanation-- and at least in the US, we don’t celebrate bank holidays,” Jed declared. Anne had clearly counted on him pulling his punches as the host, but once again she’d underestimated both how petty he could be and how protective he was of Mary who gave him very few opportunities to display it. He hadn’t had a way to reveal how she’d botched the interview with McBurney, but it this didn’t work, he’d have to think of some way to bring that up.

“Do you all box each other? Isn’t that sort of against the spirit of the season, you know, goodwill to man, ye merry gentlemen?” Henry asked, seemingly in earnest, a state he was able to enter into effortlessly. Jed knew his friend well enough to spot the gleam in his eye and thought, Good man.

“Cret--” Anne began but even Byron decided to leap into the fray then and interrupted, “Maybe the karaoke now? I made sure to load it up with holiday songs but it comes with a lot of great songs anyway. Anne honey—you always like when I sing “I Just Want To Be Your Everything,” should I start with that, get the juices flowing?”

Jed couldn’t tell how serious Byron was and he really didn’t want to know; the prospect was too risky, either way, but he heard Mary make a sound like a swallowed laugh and he realized, he finally had a reason to be thankful for Byron Hale. It was a Thanksgiving miracle. It would be pressing his luck to hear what Byron sounded like covering Andy Gibb, but the Fosters had always been gamblers and he wanted to hear Mary laugh out loud before he went to get everyone a piece of pie.

“Cue it up, Hale. You can’t tease us and not deliver.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanksgiving is partially about excess, right? So it's fitting this yet another Mercy Street modern AU Thanksgiving story, this time with more Anne Hastings (and thus, more spite). I purposefully shifted the point of view from the beginning a little, but I think Jed tells the story better than Mary. Enjoy-- and it you need to, go run around in between reading fan fiction :)
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
